FYI: i915.enable_psr=0 needed on XY tech's X2100 with a 3k screen

[atagunov]

Hi, been a while. Wanted to share some positive experience (finally) putting my X2100 into use. Because it was sitting unused for so long I was able to install 17012022 (e.g. Jan 17 2022) version of BIOS from Github. The board had way less than 200 hours so I'm hoping it was eligible for this version of BIOS which I understand lowers voltage somewhere inside preventing issues with ME from developing.

I installed Ubuntu 24.04.1 and there were no issues except for one: I have this 3000x2000 screen and if I allowed Ubuntu to switch on its "screen saver" e.g. turn off the screen after a period of inactivity, and if I allowed the machine to stay with the screen black for a while then I wasn't able to reliably switch the screen back on. Sometimes I could but most of the times I couldn't. Backlight always did come up but the picture often failed to appear.

After much digging and some trial and error I figured out that adding

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i915.enable_psr=0

to "default cmdline" in

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/etc/default/grub

was my solution. So happy it's now switching on reliably!

That option apparently means that intel graphics built into the CPU will not try to rely on "panel self refresh" to save power. Whatever the reason but this apparently does not work on my X2100. Oh well, guess I never had a very low power laptop anyway and it's not my goal now

Leaving this info here in case it benefits somebody (unlikely )

BTW, do I understand it correctly that display cable is a weak point in my machine? And that should it fail I will have a major problem sourcing a replacement?

P.S. W530 is still my daily driver running on Windows - with a cracked case . I also got an i7-3930k powered desktop with a nice discrete GPU for... some Velocidrone I guess and Roblox But I now found myself in need of a somewhat beefy Linux machine with the intent to do some compiling on it. I might even "dock" my X2100 via a CableMatters USB-C dock to attach my regular display and keyboard - they are lots more ergonomic than laptopy ones. Basically this is the most powerful Linux machine I got at the moment and being able to take it with me is a bonus. I guess I could dual-boot that i7-3930k into Linux but that somehow feels like too much trouble.

P.P.S. Sort of a pity that Xue Yao's website is now only accesible via wayback machine (link)..

P.P.P.S. This probably means I ended up giving up on the idea to sell X2100. Oh and I still need a sticker to cover the status lights on the outside of the display cover. The sticker I got from XY tech didn't hold up and now the lights are looking quite ugly. I guess I need an X200 sticker then?.. Which would still stick?

[atagunov]

Update: I have indeed docked my X2100. Power delivery and keyboard/mouse work fine, however I haven't been successful in connecting my monitor. I was hoping that X2100 does support Display Port alt mode on the port and that my usb-c hub would be able to deliver signal over DP to DVI cable under Ubuntu 20.04.1. Alas, this didn't work at all.